"This tutorial covers how to use FLUX:FX, or any iOS app, in conjunction with an existing studio setup. This uses an iConnect MIDI 2+ interface (though others are discussed) and an Aggregate Device in OSX."

Another rare Chimera synth on eBay. I have to say though, I think that this one is way overpriced for what it is. However, as the number of these diminish over the years the prices will only be driven up I guess.

By now you've hopefully seen the videos (the first one and the iOS one) and you might want to know a bit more about what MIDI Thing is and does and is all about. Well from early in Jan 2015 we'll be sharing lots more with you about MIDI Thing and how we're hoping to bring it to market too.

But for now, thanks to everyone who's watched the videos and taken an interest, we really appreciate it.

So it looks like Apple's loophole allowing them to only charge the Luxembourg VAT rate is closing as of the 1st of 2015. This will mean higher app prices (amongst other things) for most European iOS users.

I only picked this up from Mashable's piece on the subject, but if it is correct then today might be a good day to take advantage of the app sales that are still available as from tomorrow the prices not only go up, but also the VAT does too.Not the best start to 2015, is it?

I suppose it's the old cliche of "Where did the year go?", but it does feel like that a bit. It feels like loads has happened and also not too much has moved on at the same time. If indeed that makes any sense at all.

So why does it feel like that? Well I think because we've seen a lot of new things in the mobile music world, and also a lot of very similar things. From my perspective Apple haven't really innovated with the iPhone 6 and 6+ or the latest iPads either. They're upgrades, iterations of what has gone before. I'm hoping that the Apple Watch will drive innovation in directions that we can't see as yet. I hope I'm right.

We've seen some pretty amazing new apps, and I think that it has to be said that there has been innovation in some places, but not as much as I'd like to see. I haven't been wow'd enough really. Don't get me wrong, there's been plenty of apps that I've liked, been impressed with, but not enough that have that jaw-dropping impact that I've seen in previous years.

I guess it's been a kind of solid progress year for mobile music. Ups and downs, yes, but progress nevertheless.

I'd like to think that 2015 will see things change and bring some real innovation into the market. I'd like to see Android move up and start to be a real challenger to iOS. I'd also love to see another OS enter the fray, but that's really unlikely I know.

So, enough of the ramblings, there's still quite a few more things to post about in 2014 and I'd better get on with that now ...

"Second advent! And wouldn't you know it... Today we hooked up Pepp to Ableton Live again! This time with the Swedish christmas song "Gläns över sjö och strand". Also got some close-ups of the app with my fathers camera. Enjoy!"

"Over the last couple days I've cleaned up and reworked large parts of the Pepp sound engine as well as the midi sync code. The result is great sounds and rock solid midi sync, even running multiple iOS devices over WIFI. Here's a quick impromptu video I shot with my iPhone. Sound is actually recorded with the iPhone bult-in mic so kind of messy but you get the idea.."

Just before Christmas I posted this video about the MIDI Thing I've been working on. It shows MIDI Thing working with an iPad Mini and sequencing / looping 5 iOS apps simultaneously. You can find the video and the post right here.

So if you are still hunting around for something to spend those iTunes vouchers on, or if you're just after something new to play with, then you might try looking on this page which has a very long list of some really great stuff on sale at the moment, and I added a couple of new ones today too.

Voice Rack: FX is a real-time vocal effects processor that can be used live or connected to other music apps like GarageBand.

PROFESSIONAL VOCAL EFFECTS
Transform your voice with 50 vocal presets from TC-Helicon, the industry leader in vocal processing. The vocal presets have been expertly authored allowing you to use your voice to create musical sounds including bass lines, drum sounds, or spice up your vocals with professional effects like reverb, echo, delay, distortion, pitch shifting or HardTune autotuning. These very same effects are used by some of your favorite musicians.

CONNECT AND INTEGRATE WITH OTHER APPS
Connect Voice Rack: FX with some of your favorite music apps including GarageBand, giving you the ability to use these studio quality vocal effects in combination with any Inter-App Audio or Audiobus capable app.

100% DEDICATED TO YOUR VOICE
Voice Rack: FX brings TC-Helicon’s studio quality effects to your mobile music making. The same technologies found in TC-Helicon’s class leading hardware and iOS products can be found in this app.

You can get started with Voice Rack: FX needing only a pair of headphones and your voice or bring it with you to your next gig and plug it directly into the PA system to add a new level of brilliance to your performance.

Voice Rack: FX was created by TC-Helicon, the world's #1 professional audio company dedicated 100% to the needs of singers.

The Amazing Noises Reverb is a Feedback Delay Network (FDN) Reverb Effect, which can create nice reverberated ambiences, from small rooms to huge buildings. It can also simulate alien and unreal spaces, for your experimental fun!

And finally, my last in the 24 apps series is of course Bhajis loops! What else?

There was nothing on the 25th, 26th and 27th, so it's only a brief round up for today. However, if you're interested in seeing what round up posts have covered for the rest of the year, then click here and you'll see the whole lot. It's actually interesting to get an overview of what happened when and also see how the round up posts have changed over time as well.

If you are still hunting around for something to spend those iTunes vouchers on then you might try looking on this page which has a very long list of some really great stuff on sale at the moment. All of that came from the post I did just before Christmas summing up all the sales.

You may have been wondering what the final app was going to be, and then realised that it was almost certainly going to be Bhajis Loops after the post on miniMuisc. Well I could hardly leave these amazing and hugely influential apps out of any list of mine, could I?

I last mentioned both Bhajis Loops and Microbe on so many occasions, and I think as part of my 24 apps of 2012 as well, which is probably no surprise either. Of course both of these are still completely free to use should you have, or decide to acquire a Palm OS device running Palm OS 5, ideally an old Pam Tungsten T3 from eBay or a Palm Tungsten TX. You can't use either of these on iOS, although there is an emulator for jailbroken devices if you've gone down that route, but it isn't brilliant, and to be fair you need the native hardware to get a view on what Bhajis can do.

Of course I secretly (although not so secretly now as I'm about to tell you all) still hold out the tiniest of hopes that Bhajis will somehow come to iOS, or even Android! But of course this won't happen. The developer has made that very clear indeed, and I understand his reasons. However, I still think (and I'm not alone in this) that Bhajis Loops was one of the most complete and innovative mobile music apps ever.

Finally, if you're interested, I've put out a couple of unfinished collections of pieces which were both made using Bhajis which you can find on Bandcamp if you're interested. Also you might want to check out this old post about constructing a £50 mobile music studio, it'll tell you a lot more about Bhajis and what it does.

So that's my list for this year. It's been fun going through them. Some I thought I'd have on the list didn't make it, and a couple of very new apps did.

If you've missed any, or just want to go back over the series, you can find all the entries by clicking on the 'featured' tag.

Thanks to everyone who was interested in the hardware device I've been working on. The whole team has been really encouraged by the feedback we've had so far.

I thought I'd make a little video today just showing MIDI Thing working with some iOS apps. In this video you'll see MIDI Thing controlling FM4, iSEM, NLog and Cassini. In addition it is sending MIDI clock to MoDrum as well.

Hopefully you'll be able to see some creative possibilities from using it, and as always, I'd really like to hear your feedback.

I thought I'd just write a quick note to wish you all a very happy Christmas and to say a big thank you to everyone who reads Palm Sounds or has contributed in any way. 2014 has been a busy year and I hope you can all take time for a well deserved rest.

There'll probably be a couple more posts from me today, but then that'll be it from Palm Sounds until the 27th or 28th and even then I expect there will be fairly reduced posting between now and the new year. Having said that it'll all depend on whether or not I got anything music related that I want to show.

Have a great break, and remember, you can always check the "Apps on Sale" page if you're looking for something new over the next few days.

"Tuna Knobs are conductive control knobs that stick to your touchscreen allowing you to control music apps with real tactile feedback. Simply stick 'em to your screen and BOOM, it's a controller. Tuna Knobs are produced by Tuna DJ Gear, funded by Kickstarter and can be bought online at http://www.tunadjgear.com"

"FLUX:FX live - This video is showing Adrian Belew himself showing how he is using the app in his live rig during the American tour. Although the app is MIDI-controllable, Adrian has a sustainer on his guitar allowing him to lean over and play the app XY pad by hand.Adrian is playing his custom Parker Fly, through his rig including an Axe-FX and into Ableton Live for the basic loops, and then into FLUX:FX for the filtering, delays and forward/reverse loopage. The sound is live from the room via the camera mic.FLUX:FX is a multi-effect audio processor app for the iPad that lets you ‘play’ your effects. Innovative, intuitive and exciting, FLUX:FX lets you manipulate any audio signal into something entirely new, and redefines the possibilities of audio design and live performance in an app with an almost unlimited range of effect options. FLUX:FX is a truly authentic digital platform for designing your sound. Featuring more than 30 modular effects blocks, a master Performance view with 1-touch interaction, an advanced Edit view with multi-touch and full assignment possibilities, and an innovative Sequencer view to bring motion to the audio signal, this app allows the user to easily create previously unheard sounds. Fully compatible with Audiobus, Inter-App Audio and MIDI, FLUX:FX is made to connect seamlessly with existing live rigs and studio workflows. Designed and built by the collective NOIISE - incorporating the acclaimed US guitarist Adrian Belew, mobile specialists MOBGEN and audio experts Elephantcandy.Full details on the FLUX:FX application can be found at http://flux.noii.se"

We're nearly at the end of the list now and down to the final two, and if you've been a reader of Palm Sounds for any length of time it'll come as no surprise that it's miniMusic. If you don't know what I'm talking about then just to be clear, it isn't an app, or rather it is a company that makes apps, but not all iOS apps.

miniMusic is really where my own journey into mobile music began, on a Palm PDA, and quite a long time ago now. miniMusic made some of the first Palm OS apps that allowed you to make music, and back in the early days that was a really big deal, a really really big deal in fact.

I'd say that if it wasn't for miniMusic and the Palm OS I wouldn't have started talking and writing about mobile music. So I've got a lot to thank them for. In fact I ended up corresponding a good deal with Chad from miniMusic who's always been really helpful and supportive, right from the beginning of Palm Sounds.

So what does miniMusic do? Well thay've made loads of Palm apps, things like BeatPad, NotePad, MixPad and SoundPad. These apps were the building blocks of making music on the Palm OS in the early days, and as Palm OS 5 arrived they evolved and developed into a great little ecosystem of apps for making music.

Then miniMusic evolved too and started making iOS apps too. That is, they made two and released one. The one that got released is called PianoFly. Sadly it hasn't been updated in quite a while, but when it was released it was pretty excellent. Their second app was going to be called Tympanum, but again sadly it hasn't every come out, and I'm not sure that it will now.

Even so I still like to mess around with their old Palm apps on occasion. Especially with external MIDI gear.

So I think I have a lot to thank miniMusic for. I still hold out a slight hope that they might do something new or update stuff in the future, but even if they never do, I'll always be a fan.

"This is what we've been waiting for - ELECTRIBE 2 arrives in the USA! Here is my unboxing and the first part of my review - more video soon. Subscribe, ask questions and make requests.All music featured in this video is my original composition, played with the synthesizer I am reviewing."

"I used Voice Jam Studio for percussion, vocals, and background harmony, then layered in guitar separately. The bells and chimes came from my android phone. Voice Jam Studio is so easy to create exciting work in."

"Weinglas' first use of the Korg DSN-12 for Nintendo 3DS! What a great and light way to travel with a (semi-)modular synthesizer.The perfect (christmas) present for every musician ore every child of a musician (and not only if you are to late to get something else ;)"

It had to be really. An app that was one of the first that let you do almost everything in one single app. It still has a great following and is still an excellent app with amazing synths.

Of course, everyone who knows the app is waiting for the fabled NanoStudio 2, but who knows when that will come along? Even without it though, NanoStudio is still a really amazing bit of software and opens up huge creative possibilities.

I hope it'll keep on being developed, but no matter what it'll always be a favourite.

Then you should seriously consider being on the DIG index provided by Rockol. You can find the index here. DIG stands for Deep Innovation Growth Index, and it aims to become the comprehensive music-tech index and database, filling a gap in the market and acting as a point of reference for entrepreneurs, startups, angel and VC investors as well as journalists, government bodies and professional service providers.

It sort of goes without saying that Audiobus is in this list, but really 'sort of' isn't actually good enough. Sometimes it's worth actually remembering what things were like before Audiobus came along and made iOS music making a lot easier. Back then making music on the iPhone and the iPad was a bit of a struggle. In fact that was an understatement, but Audiobus 1 made life easier and it just kept getting better and better after that.

So I think we've got a lot to thank Audiobus for. They've done a fine job in the 2 years they've been around.

So I got a little behind again with the 24 list, but here we are catching up. So number 20 on my list is Caustic, which is a truly amazing app that can do almost everything you could want it to do. It has multiple synths and instruments and even has its own very powerful modular built in too.

If that wasn't enough it's also cross platform too, running on iOS and Android. Like many apps of its nature it has a very loyal following and also there are some great examples of tracks made using Caustic.

If that wasn't enough the developer has now released an editor for the Volca Sample too. My expectation is that this developer will just keep on innovating and bringing us new stuff.

As there's lots of stuff on sale at the moment you might want to try just filtering Palm Sounds down to the posts tagged with "price drop", so you can see everything recent. So if you'd like to know about all the current app sales just click here.

Another thoroughly intriguing app arrives from apeSoft. I can't wait to try this out!

Here are all the details of the app ...

Sparkle is a tool for advanced spectral hybridizations made of several algorithms that operate on frequency domain. By means of envelope preservation and phase-sync processing it can creates high-quality sound transformations.

The basic idea is to transfer the temporal structure of a sound (source) onto another sound (target) of which the spectral properties are preserved.
Simply put, you can take a voice and make it sing a Beethoven’s symphony!

I'm still managing to keep up my round up activity with this one being right on schedule, just a week from last time. So we're getting close to the end of 2014 and even so we're still seeing a huge amount of activity in the mobile music world. I wonder if it'll continue into next week though?